The audience that the New Yorker critic has in mind is "somebody who's like yourself, but in a completely different discipline."<br /><br />Question: What do you set <br />out to accomplish when you write a literary essay? <br /> <br />Louis Menand: I'm <br /> trying to make the subject <br />interesting to other people, that's the main job of being a writer. <br />Because <br />it's a subject that I'm interested in, so that's what I really care <br />about, I <br />don't really usually push an agenda, and I don't feel that my main job <br />is to <br />persuade people of something. My <br />main job is to help them think about something. <br /> <br />Question: Who is your <br />presumed audience when you write? <br /> <br />Louis Menand: For <br /> the kind of places I've written for <br />and the kind of writing that I've done, the general way to think about <br />your <br />audience is to think about somebody who's like yourself, but in a <br />completely <br />different discipline. So I <br />generally think of a biologist, or professor of biology. <br /> So if I'm writing about T. S. <br />Eliot, this is probably someone <br />who's heard of T. S. Eliot, may have read some T. S. Eliot in college, <br />but <br />doesn't know a whole lot more about T. S. Eliot, because they're busy <br />doing more <br />important things with their brains, but they might be interested in <br />something <br />that I have to say about T. S. Eliot. <br />So I have to write it in a way that appreciates that this <br />person's <br />probably very well educated, a smart person, and at the same time, <br />doesn't know <br />anything effectively about what it is I'm writing about. <br /> And that's really the trick of writing <br />for places like the New York Review of Books or the New Yorker, which <br />are two <br />of the places that I've written a lot for. <br /> <br />So that's really my audience. Now, <br /> the actual audience could be very different, could be a <br />lot of retired high school teachers, or, you know, or graduate students <br />or <br />anybody. It's very hard to know <br />who your readers are, but that's who I'm... if I have somebody in my <br />head, that's <br />probably who it is.
